25 Years of Self-organized Criticality: Concepts and Controversies

Introduced by the late Per Bak and his colleagues, self-organized criticality (SOC) has been one of the most stimulating concepts to come out of statistical mechanics and condensed matter theory in the last few decades, and has played a significant role in the development of complexity science. SOC, and more generally fractals and power laws, have attracted much comment, ranging from the very positive to the polemical. The other papers (Aschwanden et al. in Space Sci. Rev., 2014, this issue; McAteer et al. in Space Sci. Rev., 2015, this issue; Sharma et al. in Space Sci. Rev. 2015, in preparation) in this special issue showcase the considerable body of observations in solar, magnetospheric and fusion plasma inspired by the SOC idea, and expose the fertile role the new paradigm has played in approaches to modeling and understanding multiscale plasma instabilities. This very broad impact, and the necessary process of adapting a scientific hypothesis to the conditions of a given physical system, has meant that SOC as studied in these fields has sometimes differed significantly from the definition originally given by its creators. In Bak’s own field of theoretical physics there are significant observational and theoretical open questions, even 25 years on (Pruessner 2012). One aim of the present review is to address the dichotomy between the great reception SOC has received in some areas, and its shortcomings, as they became manifest in the controversies it triggered. Our article tries to clear up what we think are misunderstandings of SOC in fields more remote from its origins in statistical mechanics, condensed matter and dynamical systems by revisiting Bak, Tang and Wiesenfeld’s original papers

cDNA, amino acid carbohydrate sequence of barley seed-specific peroxidase BP 1

peptide, targeting The major peroxidase of barley seed BP 1 was characterized. Previous studies showed a low carbohy-drate content, low specific activity and tissue-specific expression, and suggested that this basic peroxi-dase could be particularly useful in the elucidation of the structure-function relationship and in the study of the biological roles of plant peroxidases (S.K. Rasmussen, K.G. Welinder and J. Hejgaard (1991) Plant Mol Biol 16: 317-327). A cDNA library was prepared from mRNA isolated from seeds 15 days after flowering. Full-length clones were obtained and showed 3 ' end length variants, a G + C content of 69~o in the translated region, a 90~o G or C preference in the wobble position of the codons and a typical signal peptide sequence. N-terminal amino acid sequencing and sequence analysis of tryptic peptides verified 98 ~o of the sequence of the mature BP 1 which contains 309 amino acid residues. BP 1 is the first characterized plant peroxidase which is not blocked by pyroglutamate. BP 1 polymorphism was observed. BP 1 is less than 50~o identical to other plant peroxidases which, taken together with its developmentally dependent expression in the endosperm 15-20 days after flowering, suggests a unique biological role of this enzyme. The barley peroxidase is processed at the C-terminus and might be tar